Iranian president in hot water?

Was just digging around a few news sites and came across this story:

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has suffered a potentially fatal blow to his authority after the country's supreme leader gave an apparent green light for MPs to attack his economic policies.

In an unprecedented rebuke, 150 parliamentarians signed a letter blaming Mr Ahmadinejad for raging inflation and high unemployment and criticising his government's failure to deliver the budget on time. They also condemned him for embarking on a tour of Latin America - from which he returns tomorrow - at a time of mounting crisis.

Full story can be found here.

How much truth there is to it I'm not entirely sure but it's encouraging news for many nations who are concerned at the Iranian nuclear programme. If Ahmadinejad is ousted and a more moderate replacement is found (perhaps Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is mentioned in the article) a diplomatic solution becomes much more likely. Didn't moderate candidates do well in elections in Iran recently too? Could be indicative of a change of tact on the part of the Iranians - they seem to feel Bush will 'deal' with them before he leaves office and don't particularly want him to do it via the military route or via more sanctions (which will make the mounting economic problems within Iran even worse). Could there be hope for a peaceful suspension of Iranian nuclear activities?

Is funny how people take the Iranian president like the US president having absolute powers.

Bush may have absolute powers given to him by the executive branch, But the Iran president has to answer to the people that holds more power than him.

The Iranian President, Iamaidiot, is just a figurehead. The muslim counsil makes the actual decisions.

Iamaidiot is going to be used as a scapegoat....

Yeah, he's in hot water allright. In fact, if he keeps going the way he is, the water all around Tehran is going to end up boiling.

While politically he is failing, and economically the country is hurting, he's managed to get 3 US carrier battle groups parked on his back door, ready to fire. Not too smart.

He suffers from the same thing I believe to be a problem in this country: too much foreign policy attention and not enough at home.

The thing that a lot of people fail to understand about Iran is that unlike a lot of middle eastern countries the society itself, meaning the common people, are very progressive. They are students, business owners and business people, they use the internet extensively and embrace a lot of western culture like nusic and literature etc, although not all do openly. These people arent all living in caves and worshipping Mullahs like many are led to believe. Most strongly disagree with Ahmadinejad and recognize him as the fanatical would be tyrant that he is and many openly oppose his policies. They are at the mercy of a small but powerful fundamentalist party that has hijacked their government and placed all of these absurd and arcane laws into effect. It would be similar to the U.S. government being over taken by hard core born again Christians, obviously the vast majority of people in our society would strongly oppose and disagree with leadership like that (even though Bush isnt a far stretch from it ) The little Iranian dictator has brought a lot of heat down on himself by his holocaust denial and his militant rhetoric and he has made many enemies in his own country by bringing Iran to the brink of war. I honestly believe that his days are numbered, the U.S. military won't have to remove him from office it will be done by his own people from within.